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Show HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM IS CLUTTERED SPOKANE. Wash.. April S "Our present high school curriculum is clut I tored with all sorts of subjects that give knowledge about themselves, but j thai bare ierer proved their usefulness useful-ness In life." said J. R. Jewell. Dean of the University of Arkansas, In an I address here today before a meeting jof the Inlnnil Empire Teach' rs' association. asso-ciation. He said In part: "The present high school curriculum I Is the shelter of many subjects that have never boon ablo to give a better reason for their existence. Worse, It !- the shelter of the poorest teaching we have namely, teaching about certain cer-tain subjects Inntend of an enlivened teaching of the subject. The poorest course I have ever had myself was labelled B"'any. It was mislabelled, however, for it was a course about Botany Bot-any and not of Botany. I suspect that England Is tho most poorly taught subjeet in our secondary schools and lhat Argumentation is tho most poorly poor-ly taught division of that subject, though Exposition would give it a hard race for last place. That Is because the iverage teacher teaches about Exposition Ex-position or Argumentation and does not teach the subjects themselves. "Not long ago I visited a famous Classical High school in an eastern eity. and In an English room saw a list of 40 dates in Chaucer's life given a class to commit to memory. Knowledge, Knowl-edge, again, as dry as dead men's hones The poorest single recitation I over saw in a certain great state in one of the better high schools where a teacher consumed almost the whole period discussing before the class vhethor or not Grey knew what he was about when he made the second line of his Elegy In a Country Churchyard Church-yard read "The lowing herd winds slowly o'er tho lea," Instead of "wind" In sort, whether or not herd is a collective noun and so takes a singular singu-lar verb. "Worse than all else today, false emphasis on knowledge has brought about an equally false distinction b -I tween so-called "classes" who know.j 'and so-called "masses" who perhaps hare not so much knowledge, but who are the doers in this workaday world; of our. It Is this theory of education! that Is at the bottom of much of our social unrest. "But we have made progress, for II U now the accepted belief that manual' training, well taught, makes for good ; habits of thought, and here it ilndsj Us excuse for existence rather than as a preparation for a life of carpen-, try, which It certainly Is not. It is ralnahte to have this one htudy In the curriculum In which a boy cannot cheat or bluff. If his box corners do I not fit they do not fit. here there arei positive standards of comparison." 00 |